Maple Leafs center out week-to-week

Maple Leafs center Scott Laughton is out week-to-week with a lower-body injury, the club announced Friday. He was injured in last night’s exhibition loss to the Red Wings, Darren Dreger of TSN reports, although he didn’t appear to miss a shift. He’ll presumably start the season on standard or long-term injured reserve as a result.

Laughton, 31, is entering his first full season with the Maple Leafs, which acquired him from the Flyers at last season’s trade deadline. The pending unrestricted free agent had a spectacular preseason showing, notching a pair of goals and assists each for four points in three games. That’s a semi-promising sign after he didn’t factor in much offensively following his pickup last year. While Laughton has rattled off four straight 30-point seasons, he only had a 2-4–6 scoring line in 33 combined regular-season and playoff games for Toronto.

A decrease in production should have been expected with Laughton moving into a reduced role on a deeper Toronto offense, but that was a sharp dropoff from the 27 points he had in 60 games for the Flyers before the swap. Still, Laughton averaged around 13:30 per game to close out the year with Toronto, which would have been his lowest deployment in a full season since the 2017-18 campaign.

Laughton slotted in primarily as the Leafs’ fourth-line center after his acquisition and is widely projected to do so again this year, at least after he’s back in the lineup. He’s spent the vast majority of training camp between Steven Lorentz and 2023 first-round pick Easton Cowan, who looks primed to break camp for the first time and make his NHL debut on opening night. He’ll do so at a reasonable $1.5MM cap hit, reduced by Philly retaining the other half of his $3MM average annual value in last season’s trade.

While Laughton not taking up a roster spot on opening night makes life a little easier for the Maple Leafs as they look to clear their depth forward logjam, it doesn’t entirely remove the problem. David Kämpf, who routinely served as Toronto’s 4C before Laughton’s pickup, practiced in that spot today, per David Alter of The Hockey News, indicating his job is likely safe as long as Laughton’s out. They still have one forward cut to make to get down to 14, though, even with Laughton projected to land on IR. Not counting Kämpf, Calle Järnkrok, Michael Pezzetta, and Nicholas Robertson were the three forwards who didn’t play in the loss to Detroit that featured an opening-night preview. All are waiver-eligible, so barring a trade, one of them will land on the wire in the coming days.

Robertson, who’s on a one-year deal paying him $1.825MM and has averaged 19 goals and 32 points per 82 games over the last two seasons, carries the highest risk of a claim and will presumably remain with the club as a result. That leaves the veteran Järnkrok, who missed all but 19 games last year with multiple injuries and carries a cap hit of $2.1MM on an expiring deal, and the league-minimum enforcer Pezzetta. While the latter ultimately carries less utility, the former might have an easier time clearing thanks to his more consequential cap impact.